'Soul Voices' speak to us of the past

Althemese Barnes, founding director of the Riley Foundation, sits in the Riley House with a poster promoting her new project, which centers around the oral history of Katherine Speights, a Tallahassee resident who grew up during the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement.(Photo: Andrew Salinero/Democrat)Buy Photo

Althemese Barnes is a listener. A listener with the sensibility of a treasure-hunter — one whose quests are the rapidly disappearing histories of the aging African Americans in our own communities. Barnes, the Director of the Riley House Museum, recently presented the first of another of her preservation projects to remind Tallahasseeans of the value of the history living all around us.

On Wednesday at Tallahassee Community College, Barnes, along with FSU Associate Professor of History, Dr. Jennifer Koslow, showcased Part One of the oral/visual interviews Barnes conducted over the last 20 years.

The second of the interviews will be shown Tuesday and audience members invited to participate in a Q and A and share some of their own stories. The presentation is funded by COCA and the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources.

With “at least 75-150” collected interviews that are intimate VHF and DVD conversations with men and women in their 80s and 90s, Althemese Barnes is delighted with the opportunity to share these wide-ranging and detailed glimpses into a past many have only heard about in movies or novels.

Yet, this is real life, narratives told by real people who lived through Jim Crow; people whose relatives were born enslaved; people who shared their memories of what it meant to live outside of the “ruling” culture.

Titled, “Soul Voices,” the first of a two-part series in which Barnes speaks with Katherine Speights, 93 at the time of the interview in 1996. The second in the series, a conversation with Lessie Jackson Braxton, 86, is this week.

Braxton taught in five of the 52 one room schools that served newly freed slaves in Leon County: Lake McBride, Centenary, Horseshoe, St Stephens, Richardson and Lincoln.

Graduates of these schools might find their names among the graduates that will be highlighted.

“So frequently, even family members will not have heard the stories these individuals shared. The young ones don’t really have the knowledge of their own families or of how hard these people worked and what they accomplished — often with very little,” Barnes said.

In the interviews, Barnes can be heard asking about details — family relationships, who is kin to whom, how people are related.

“This was very important in our communities,” Barnes said. “Who were your mother’s relatives… who were your cousins and aunts, what were their family names...? It wasn’t just that during slavery African Americans were often not allowed to learn to read or write, but also because the families were so often separated… a mother or a father or a child sold or moved to another plantation owner… even after slavery ended. It was important to memorize who your family was to know who you were… and maybe one day be reunited.” And there were other reasons to know your lineage.

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Althemese Barnes, founding director of the Riley Foundation, stands outside of the Riley House on Monday. Her recent project centers around the oral history of Katherine Speights, a Tallahassee resident who grew up during the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement.(Photo: Andrew Salinero/Democrat)

In the case of Katherine Speights, who was biracial with long, soft dark hair and fair skin, it wasn’t until she was grown and still questioning why she looked the way she did that her aunt took her aside and explained that her mother had been taken by a white plantation owner who raped and impregnated her, then held her against her will. It was not until later that an uncle “kidnapped” Speight’s mother back and returned her and the baby Katherine to the community.

This was not uncommon, said Barnes.

“It also happened to Mrs. Speight’s aunt. She too had been taken by a white owner and kept in Chaires on his plantation. Her mother walked all the way from Lake Imonia out to Chaires and 'got her and her baby back.' Unfortunately, it was cold and they’d hidden the young mother in the church while the white owner was hunting the community there for her. “She caught pneumonia… and she died. It happened,” Barnes said.

“Sadly, many of the young people now don’t know what these people lived through, and how in spite of it they survived and even thrived.” Hearing these stories told by the people who lived them is at once moving and historically vital to know, contends Barnes.

Barnes says she has always had an interest in history, not just from books, but from the people whose stories she recalls listening to as a child. Though she first got a degree from FAMU in piano and voice, became the Lincoln High School Choir Director, and later worked for years at the Departments of Labor and Education while earning a master's from FAMU in Education, it was after she received her Certification from FSU in Museum Management that she found what she says is her true calling.

Now, Barnes, who is the founding Director of The Riley House Museum, the prime mover behind the Florida African American Heritage Preservation Network which includes dozens of museums across Florida dedicated to African American culture, the author or compiler of three books on Leon County’s African American communities, and was appointed by President Obama to the National Museum and Library Services Board, has decided it is time to produce the oral histories she so cherishes for a wider audience.

Keeping in mind the stories she heard from her parent’s large family of nine children, and those of her dozens of aunts and cousins, Barnes treats her interviewees’ recollections like fragile and valuable relics. And she has some treasured tales of her own.

“I remember hearing about my Aunt Violet who some of the old family members remembered being carried away on a wagon. Nobody knew where she was taken. But one day, many years later, our Cousin John said a man from Alabama was looking for the Porters. It seems Aunt Violet’s great-great-nephew had come all the way down looking for the Porters here. He didn’t know exactly who we were, but he’d wanted to tell us that Aunt Violet had gotten married, had children… and had a life. That’s why family lineage is so important… it’s a connection.”

All of Barnes’ interviews are not yet ready for public showing. She hopes they will be. She hopes to complete another book or two on African American communities. She hopes to get enough grant money to do it all. Barnes, herself, takes no salary as Director of Riley House. “It helps to keep us solvent,” she says. “We are always careful with the funding we receive.”

But she is ever-on-the-look for new volunteers, hopefully retirees who wish to be involved and view history and its preservation as something of great importance.

“You know, long ago in the African American culture, someone who passed was laid out in the home… a viewing, like a wake… was held, and stories about that person, about family were passed around. I consider these interviews something like a viewing. It’s a way to share stories with relatives… and the greater community… and the way life was lived. I hope they will touch everyone who sees and hears them. I think they will. I think they will.”